


Through Darkness into Light

by Blanska



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 04:37:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4652502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blanska/pseuds/Blanska
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Give away fic, inpired by the song: Poets of the Fall - Love Will Come to You. Blackwall and Solas take a little symbolic journey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through Darkness into Light

The cold and dark night was thrown into an orange, flaming chaos in a matter of minutes. By the time the scouts managed to wake up everyone at the camp, the dragon was already breathing fire upon the Inquisition. Blackwall had his armor on and his steel out, ready to fight the monster, but when the beast flew over them, setting the rest of their tents on fire, the Inquisitor gave the order to retreat. She was right. If it wasn’t for the fire, the night would have been pitch black, and they were in the middle of a forest with no clearing near them. They couldn’t hope to fight a flying dragon under such circumstances. 

Blackwall needed to get out of this flaming hell. The air was getting unbearably hot, and it was already hard to breathe and see because of the clouds of smoke in the air. Once he had found a way out, he helped some of the scouts that were trying to rescue supplies. The whole situation was aggravating. He never knew how much time they had before the monster attacked again, it was hard to see where the beast was until it was too late, but he could constantly hear its gigantic wings flapping somewhere above them. 

Finally, when the scouts were gone, Blackwall made his way out of the flames, back into the darkness of the night. He wanted to put a fair distance between himself and the place of the ambush, but before he could get far enough, he heard the whooshing sound of giant wings getting closer at a dangerous pace. He couldn’t have known if the dragon spotted him and was preparing to roast him where he stood or if it just happened to fly in his general direction, but he assumed the worse case. He looked around quickly, trying to find a hiding spot, a bigger rock or something, but he could barely see anything in the blackness. Then just before the sound of the dragon’s wings became way too loud for him to hope that the beast wasn’t after him, he ducked and at the same time a barrier popped up around him with a light blue glow. In the next moment wild, orange flames flooded the spot where Blackwall was standing, leaving the trees behind them burning like torches. 

Now, by the light of dragonfire, Blackwall could see that it was the elven apostate, Solas who saved him. “Thank you.” the warrior gave a sigh of relief. 

“It will come back.” the elf stated while staring at the black sky. “It’s already turning around.”

Blackwall looked around again, his eyes searching for cover desperately. “There!” he shouted. “I think there’s a cave.” 

The elf looked back to check if the other man was right, then turned his attention back to the flying monster. “Let’s not waste any more time, then!”

The two of them began to run towards the rocks, and Blackwall could hear the dragon approaching once again. The barrier around him lit up, the warrior assumed that Solas strengthened it to withstand yet another attack, and as soon as they reached the cave’s entrance, the forest behind them was covered in fire again. In the safety of the cavern, they could finally catch their breath, and look upon the destruction that the beast had caused. The burning trees were already growing thinner, the weaker ones were slowly giving in to the flames and crashing into their undamaged neighbors, spreading the dragon’s curse as they fell. 

“Like mice cowering from the cat.” Blackwall grumbled half under his breath.

“Yes. But these mice will live to see another day.” the elf told him, and turned away from the sight of the burning forest. He conjured veilfire as he walked towards the darkness, and the green light of magic revealed that the inside of the cave was covered in writings. Now it looked like a natural cavern that was turned into some kind of underground building. Solas stepped closer to examine the writings, and he was quiet for a while. 

“Can you read what it says?” the warrior asked after a minute of waiting.

“Most of it, yes.” Solas replied, then started quoting the inscriptions. “ _We wait in the dark until we rise to take our kin, the sinners and cowards. We know no peace, and shall leave no peace to the ones who are alike_.” 

“That is… cheerful.” Blackwall remarked, then quickly changed the subject to a more useful one. “So, shall we wait here until it’s safe to go outside?” 

“No. I suggest that we explore further.” the elf replied in a professional tone.

“I don’t see how that’s a good idea.”

“This place is supposed to be some kind of tomb.” the elf began to explain, but Blackwall interrupted him.

“Which only stresses my point, but go on.”

“We might have never discovered it, if it wasn’t for the dragon. Now that we’re trapped here, we can investigate, maybe even find out who built this place and what purpose it served. Who knows? Maybe we’ll find valuable information.” 

“And if we’ll find nothing but giant spiders?” the bearded man asked him.

“Then we will come back empty handed and wait for the sun to rise, as you prefer.” 

“Fair enough.” Blackwall nodded. “Lead the way, then.”

The two of them made their way through the tunnels of the cavern, stopping quite often because Solas wished to check the inscriptions on the walls. Sometimes he murmured some elvish words under his breath, while Blackwall waited around, staring into the darkness, his hand never leaving the hilt of his sword. He half expected giant spiders pouring out of the shadows at any moment, and all this useless waiting was making him even more frustrated.

After a while they came upon a crossing of tunnels and Solas led him down on one of them without any hesitation. They walked down on old, treacherous stairs, and arrived at a slightly bigger room than the ones before, where a walking corpse greeted them by charging mindlessly at the two men. 

They took it down swiftly, and once the corpse was lying on the ground in pieces, Solas stated with a calm tone: “It is as I suspected.”

“Glad to see, you’re enjoying yourself.” the warrior grumbled.

“The Veil is thin here.” the elf continued without paying much attention to the other’s comment. “But there’s a reason beyond that, that makes the dead so restless.”

“Let me guess. You intend to find out what it is.” clearly, Blackwall wasn’t overjoyed by the idea.

“Don’t you?” Solas asked, and continued his way through the room.

Blackwall gave a troubled sigh. “I can’t speak for you, but I for one have no wish to be eaten alive by the undead.”

“I’m hoping it won’t come to that.” the mage replied. “I suspect that there’s another way out of the caverns.”

“And what makes you think that?”

“The writings on the wall implied that there might be an exit this way.” the explanation didn’t convince the warrior, who only replied with yet another sigh. Then Solas stepped to the wall and quickly searched the signs. “There it is. _Only the one who faces the darkness shall come into the light._ The texts are filled with such hints.”

“That is not reassuring.” Blackwall complained, but in the end he followed the elf and trusted that they would be able to combat whatever complications lied before them. 

As they advanced in the ruins, corpses attacked them again and again, each time more of them than before. As the number of their foes increased, the two of them had to concentrate even more and find a way to work together in a more efficient way to defeat the undead. But it was becoming too tiring and eventually there was an ambush that seemed to be too much for the explorers.

Blackwall was hacking at the enemy, and Solas needed to abandon his veilfire after a while, and only the flash of his spells lit up the room for brief moments. This made the fight even harder for Blackwall for he wasn’t blessed with the night vision of elves. But the glimpses he got promised nothing good. They were getting overwhelmed. He could feel the corpses reaching for him, clawing at his armor and gripping at his clothes. They were everywhere, and by the time he fought one off of himself, there were two others upon him. 

The fight was getting desperate. He was exhausted, but he couldn’t allow himself to pause for breath, he had to give everything and slay as many corpses as he could. But there was nothing more to give. His body was failing him, he wanted to seek the help of a healing potion, or a stamina potion, or rather both of them, but the undead were holding him back, and he could barely move his arms anymore. Then suddenly bright flames lit up the room, and Blackwall could look into his attackers’ faces – or what remained of them. 

After a moment of darkness, the light appeared again and covered all the corpses in flames. They backed off, and finally Blackwall could reach for his potions. As the undead were still struggling with fire, the two explorers had a chance to strike and managed to cut down their enemies in a minute. 

“That wasn’t going as well as I would have liked.” the warrior stated while catching his breath after the battle.

“I agree.” Solas replied. “But this isn’t the time to turn back. We have come a long way. We must be close to an exit.” He picked up his staff again and began to examine the writings on the walls.

“Maker, I hope you’re right.” the human sighed. “I had more than enough of these monstrosities.”

“ _The king of the damned shall take you into his army of dark souls. No man can resist him. No man can face him and live._ ” the elf quoted the text.

“To me it sounds like there’s even more undead ahead of us.” Blackwall stated with a hint of irritation on his voice.

“You might be right. We should tread carefully.” Solas agreed and walked to the far side of the room where he had found another door.

Blackwall followed him. As much as he didn’t want to go ahead, he got chills just by thinking about walking all the way back to the entrance. He hoped with all his heart that the elf was right and there was an exit somewhere before them. 

They moved through the tunnels and this time, there wasn’t a single ambush, but instead they came upon another door. They peeked inside, and spotted a gruesome scenery. This room looked more like a cavern than the ones before. There was some water on the uneven floor, and in the middle there was a smaller hill with a throne upon it. In the throne they saw something that might have been another corpse, but Blackwall couldn’t make out the details, and surrounding the throne there were more corpses, frozen like many statues, all reaching towards the one in the middle.

“This could be the source of unrest in this tomb.” Solas said carefully, in hushed voice. “Perhaps a demon that had found its way into our world and controls the corpses. If we kill it, the dead might know peace once again.” 

“Even if you’re right…” Blackwall began in a worried tone. “There’s only two of us, and at least a dozen of undead. And if there will be demons as well, we won’t stand a chance. I say we move on and find that exit you keep mentioning.”

“Yes. That would be best.” the warrior gave a quiet sigh of relief to the elf’s reply, then backed away from the door, still eyeing the creepy view of the room.

After a couple of minutes of walking, Solas stopped once again. Blackwall assumed that the mage wanted to spend some more time reading the walls just like before, but then he noticed it too. 

“Can you feel it?” the elf asked him.

“Fresh air.” the warrior stated with a hint of surprise.

In the next moment, the mage tapped on the ground with his staff and the light of the veilfire went out. The sudden darkness was too much for Blackwall, but after a few second his eyes began to adjust to the lack of light, and he noticed it as well. There was dim light coming from ahead, and Solas was already walking towards it. 

“Ah. It seems I have lost track of time.” the elf said as he reached the exit.

Blackwall followed him up the stairs and inhaled the fresh, morning air. The sun was already filtering through the forest trees and giving a bright, green light to the grass on the mountain clearing. Suddenly everything was as calm as if there were no raging dragons in the skies, no dead bodies rising from their sleep, and no evil darkspawn magisters ravaging the world. The only thing that broke the tranquil silence of the forest was the wind that carried bird songs through the leaves. They were finally safe. Even if that wasn’t true, Blackwall certainly felt that way as he was staring at the beautiful landscape.

“ _Only the one who faces the darkness shall come into the light.“_ Solas quoted the inscriptions once again.

“We should get going and find the others.” Blackwall announced, and at that moment, he had no doubts that they would achieve that goal easily.


End file.
